American producers create nearly all of the world's highest-grossing films. Many of the world's best-selling music artists are based in the United States. U.S. tourism sector welcomes approximately 60 million international visitors every year.
Economy of the West Region
During the Gold Rush days (Золотая лихорадка), farming and mining were the West Region's major industries. Other businesses began as more people moved into the region. Today, farming and mining are still done. You will also find manufacturing, technology, and tourism in the region.
The region's natural resources and climate are very important to its industries. Most of the West's climate is hot and dry. In the Mountain West it is cool and dry. Along the Pacific coast, there is a lot of rain. However, some of the areas of the Pacific West are hot and dry. Farmers in these areas grow specific types of crops. In the Mountain West you will find wheat, potatoes, cabbage, and onions. Colorado and Montana have wheat farms. Idaho is famous for its potatoes.
In the Pacific Coast valleys, there are many farms. These valleys receive a lot of precipitation (атмосферные осадки). However, it is not enough to grow certain crops. Farmers use irrigation (орошение) to water their crops. In California's Central Valley, you will find fruit and vegetable farms. California is one of our top fruit producing states. Apricots, grapefruit, oranges, peaches, and strawberries are grown in the valley. Oregon's Willamette Valley has fruit, dairy, vegetable, and grain farms. Oats (овес) and barley (ячмень) are grown on some of these farms. Potatoes, green beans, onions, and broccoli are also grown in the valley. Do you like fruit? Well, you can find peaches, plums, and cherries in Willamette.
Alaska and Hawaii are two of the region's states that have extreme climates. Both states, however, also have agricultural industries. In southern Alaska there are vegetable and fruit farms. Near Anchorage, potatoes, barley, carrots, and strawberries are grown. Hawaii is famous for its pineapples. On the island of Lanai (lah NAH ee), one farming company grows the pineapples. You can also find sugarcane (сахарные тростник) in Hawaii. The plant is grown on plantations. Once it is harvested, it is sent to sugar mills (сахарные заводы). This is where the table sugar we use is produced. Bananas, rice, coffee, and macadamia nuts are also grown in Hawaii.
Mining is a huge industry. It began with the first Gold Rush miners. It continues today in many of the region's states. The minerals and ores are used to manufacture products. Silver, turquoise, and copper (медь) are found in Arizona and New Mexico. Turquoise (бирюза) and silver are used to make jewelry. The jewelry is made by Native American craftspeople (ремесленники). They make rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Imagine having jewelry that has greenish-blue minerals. Copper is common in Arizona and Utah. Utah has the largest open-pit mine in the world. This means the copper is mined above ground. Electrical wires and plumbing pipes (сантехнические трубы) are made from copper. Uranium is another mineral found in New Mexico. It is used in nuclear power (атомная энергия) plants. These plants make electricity. Arizona has the largest deposit of uranium in the country. Remember, the region has many mines. Factories and plants are located near these mines. One type of plant takes copper ore and turns it into copper metal. This plant is called a smelter (плавильный завод, плавильные печи). You will find smelters in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Economy of the South
Four major trends are driving the South’s economic resurgence: the energy boom, the ongoingadoption of new mobile information technologies, a reinvigorated (активизировавшийся) manufacturing sector and the still unfolding recovery in the region’s housing market. Texas, with its huge energy and technology sectors, has led the South’s recovery. Other states have been steadily gaining ground (делать успехи, продвигаться вперед) more recently, reflecting improving conditions in residential construction and manufacturing.
Florida and Georgia appear to be leading that turnaround (поворот). Both were hammered by the housing slump (резкое падение) and saw home sales and home prices rebound dramatically in 2013.
Manufacturing is also playing a major role in Georgia ’s turnaround. The Peach State has landed scores of new manufacturing facilities, including a new 890,000-square-foot-plant for Caterpillar outside Athens, which opened last June and should ultimately create 1,400 jobs. A $1 billion biologics plant for Baxter International is being built near Covington, which is expected to ultimately create 1,500 new jobs. In addition to landing a host of new projects in 2013, much of
Georgia’s existing industry also appears to be on the upswing (экономический подъем). The carpet industry, centered in the Northwest part of the state, saw several positive announcements over the course of the year and employment, which had been plummeting, appears to be improving. The automotive and aviation sectors also expanded in 2013, and more growth is expected this year.
Florida’s economy begins the New Year in much better shape. Employment and income growth have improved considerably over the past year, with nonfarm payrolls (занятость не в сельскохозяйственном секторе) climbing 2.6 percent and personal income rising 4.1 percent. The improvement reflects a turnaround in the state’s important housing sector, which has seen prices increase 9.9 percent from a year ago and the proportion of homeowners that owe more on their mortgages (ипотечные кредиты) than their home is worth fall 13.3
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percentage points to 28.8 percent. Population growth has also improved, with the Sunshine State adding 232,000 new residents in 2013, according to the latest Census figures (данные переписи). Florida also picked up a new Fortune 500 corporate headquarters, following the relocation of Hertz Global Holdings from New Jersey to Fort Myers. The move coincides with a general pick up in expansions and relocations (перемещения) throughout the state, including such firms as Deutsche Bank, USAA and Amazon.
North Carolina saw the largest drop in its unemployment rate of any state during 2013, with its jobless rate (уровень безработицы) falling 2.8 percentage points to 6.6 percent in December. Most of that decline occurred in the second half of the year, when significant changes to the state’s unemployment
Growth did not accelerate across all southern states. Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia all continue to struggle with federal spending cutbacks (сокращения).
Northeast Economy
The Northeast economy has had even more difficulty regaining its momentum than the national economy. Real GDP in the Northeast rose just 1.0 percent in 2013, compared to a 1.8 percent gain nationwide. Our own regional economic activity index shows the region continuing to expand at a slower pace relative to its historical trend during the first quarter, with the index remaining in negative territory at -0.37.
New York City and Boston remain the notable bright spots within the region. Gains have been fairly broad based, with some of the strongest growth coming from the region’s emerging tech sector. Growth in financial services, legal services and publishing have all lagged (отставать), however, while hiring has remained solid in retail trade (розничная торговля), home health care (медицинская помощь на дому) and the hospitality sector (гостиничный сектор). While this mix of new jobs has brought hiring back above its prerecession level, it has also weighed on income growth (рост доходов) and is a big reason why real GDP growth has remained so sluggish (медленный, вялый) in the region.
Technology and health care have also helped propel job growth in Boston. Growth is being driven by hiring in software (программное обеспечение) development, Big Data, cloud computing, life sciences and medical device manufacturers. Growth outside the tech sector has been relatively modest, with the bulk (основная масса) of gains coming in health care, retail trade and the hospitality sector. The modest gains in reported job growth seem at odds with (расходиться во мнениях) all the visible activity taking place in New York City and downtown Boston. An influx of tech jobs into the center city, part of a trend seen around the country, has helped take up some of the space freed up in the financial sector. Tourism and residential real estate have also gotten a boost (рост, увеличение) from an increase in international visitors and international home buyers, which has helped fill hotel rooms, boost restaurant business and push home sales higher. Incomes have lagged behind, however.
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Midwest Economy
The Midwest benefits from relatively newfound energy sources, namely in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, which has transformed that state’s economy. The energy industry in the Midwest has even more potential, particularly with the Marcellus and Utica shale plays in eastern Ohio. An abundance of natural gas has the potential to bring related industries to the area and help drive growth in the longer run. Falling oil prices, however, run the risk of hurting production and place new downside risks on North Dakota in particular. Agriculture is also a major economic driver for a number of these states. Agriculture, forestry, fishing & hunting in Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota contributed well over a full percentage point to 2013 real GDP growth in each of those states. The farm sector also posted strong gains in Kansas and Minnesota.
US Welfare System - Help for US Citizens
Federally funded and governed US welfare began in the 1930's during the Great Depression. The US government responded to the overwhelming number of families and individuals in need of aid by creating a welfare program (программа социального обеспечения) that would give assistance (помощь) to those who had little or no income.
The US welfare system stayed in the hands of the federal government for the next sixty-one years. Many Americans were unhappy with the welfare system, claiming that individuals were abusing the welfare program by not applying for jobs, having more children just to get more aid, and staying unmarried so as to qualify for (претендовать на, получать право на) greater benefits. Welfare system reform became a hot topic in the1990's. Bill Clinton was elected as President with the intention of reforming the federally run US Welfare program. In 1996 the Republican Congress passed a reform law signed by President Clinton that gave the control of the welfare system back to the states.
Eligibility (приемлемость) Requirements for State Welfare Program
Eligibility for a Welfare program depends on numerous factors. Eligibility is determined using gross and net income, size of the family, and any crisis situation such as medical emergencies, pregnancy, homelessness or unemployment. A case worker is assigned to those applying for aid. They will gather all the necessary information to determine the amount and type of benefits that an individual is eligible for.
The Federal government provides assistance through TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). TANF is a grant given to each state to run their own welfare program. To help overcome the former problem of unemployment due to reliance on the welfare system, the TANF grant requires that all recipients of welfare aid must find work within two years of receiving aid, including single parents who are required to work at least 30 hours per week opposed to 35 or 55 required by two parent families. Failure to comply with (повиноваться, выполнять, удовлетворять) work requirements could result in loss of benefits.
Types of Welfare Available
The type and amount of aid available to individuals and dependent children varies from state to state. When the Federal Government gave control back to the states there was no longer one source and one set of requirements (один набор требований). Moststates offer basic aid such as health care, food stamps (талоны на питание), child care assistance, unemployment, cash aid (денежная помощь), and housing assistance (помощь в обеспечении жильем).
Recently, there has been concern that the Social Security fund (Фонд социального страхования) may not have enough money to fulfill its obligations (выполнять обязательства) in the 21st century, when the population of elderly Americans is expected to increase dramatically. Policy-makers have proposed various ways to make up the anticipated deficit (ожидаемый дефицит), but a long-term solution is still being debated.
In the years since Roosevelt, other American presidents, particularly Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, have established assistance programs. These include Medicaid (Федеральная Медицинская помощь неимущим) and Medicare (Государственная программа бесплатной медицинской помощи престарелым), which are discussed in the "Health Care" Section; food stamps, certificates that people can use to purchase food; and public housing, which is built at federal expense (за счет государства) and made available to persons with low incomes.
In 2009, a family of four with a yearly income of $21,954 or less was considered poor by American standards (U.S. Census Bureau News, September 16, 2010);11.1 percent (8.8 million) of American families fell into this category. The number of people below the official poverty thresholds (пороги бедности) numbered 43.6 million people in poverty in 2009, a poverty rate of 14.3 percent. This rate was the highest since 1994, but was 8.1 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available. In addition to the benefits discussed above, many families below the poverty line (за чертой бедности) receive welfare payments (социальные выплаты), sums of money provided by the government each month to those whose income is too low to obtain such necessities as food, clothing, and shelter.
The most common form of welfare payment has been through a program called Aid to Families With Dependent Children (Помощь семьям с детьми, находящимися на иждивении) (AFDC). Originally designed to help children whose fathers had died, AFDC evolved into the main source of regular income for millions of poor American families. Certain aspects of the American welfare system -- especially AFDC payments -- came under criticism in the 1980s and 1990s, and the system itself became an issue in national elections. In his 1992 presidential campaign, for example, then-Governor Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it." The charge that social programs tend to trap the poor in dependency led to the 1996 redesign (переконструировать) of certain federal programs. A new law overhauled (капитально отремонтированный) welfare by replacing AFDC with state-run (управляемый государством) assistance programs financed by federal grants (TANF- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). The law also limits lifetime welfare assistance to five years, requires most able-bodied (трудоспособный) adults to work after two years on welfare, eliminates (ликвидирует) welfare benefits for legal immigrants who have not become U.S. citizens, and limits food stamps to a period of three months unless the recipients are working. In 2008, over 50 million Americans received nearly $614 billion in Social Security benefits.
The total cost (общая цена) of all federal assistance programs -- including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and various welfare programs -- accounts for (рассматривать, объяснять, нести ответственность) nearly one-half of all money spent by the federal government. That is a doubling (удвоение, дублирование) of the percentage that obtained in the 1960s.
Needy Americans can also turn to sources other than government for help. A broad spectrum of private charities and voluntary organizations is available. Volunteerism is on the rise in the United States, especially among retired persons. It is estimated that almost 50 percent of Americans over age 18 do volunteer work, and nearly 75 percent of U.S. households (хозяйство, предприятия) contribute (делать вклад в) money to charity.